Eco-Edu Hubs

<< Background >>The Eco-Edu Hubs project dealt with education of young people in the field of environmental protection, sustainable living and fight against climate change, by providing young people with information and education about sustainable lifestyles, which contributes to the minimization of climate changes’ influence. The consortium of project partners has already started to develop the network by accepting new organisations in project life time and in the up-coming period in order to support them in their effort to educate young people. The idea was to support project partners, associates and their future network members in creating spaces for young people, Eco-Edu Hubs, where they can learn by doing how to apply sustainable lifestyles. The network organisations do have either workshop rooms, or repairing rooms, or educational centres, or corners, or stands, or shelfs, or public kitchens, or urban gardens, or green start-up hubs, or organise eco festivals etc. where young people can practise in real these small steps of sustainable lifestyle and hopefully apply it in their everyday life. << Objectives >>This project aimed to create a small network of youth organisations of different backgrounds and experience that enabled them to work together on developing educational materials, both printed and online for young people in the field of environmental sustainability, but also youth workers. These materials were then disseminated at public events in the partners’ local communities. In a long-term perspective, this network will work on extending the membership and creating more sustainable solutions for environmental education for young people, eco-educational centres, such as rural educational centres, corners, stands, urban gardens etc. where young people can learn and practice sustainable lifestyles. The project leader, Relearn, an organisation located in a renowned ecovillage, Suderbyn in Sweden. Relearn has many partners from Western Europe and Baltic countries and seeked to extend its partnerships to the Western Balkans region. The project had 2 associated partners, one coming from Georgia and one from North Macedonia, ARNO that withdrew the partnership due to too many projects, but found a new partner, Go Green<< Implementation >>We implemented four activities:1) Partners monthly ZOOM meetings with 12 meetings out of 18 planned activities of dissemination of project results and project administration activities. We covered the missing ZOOM meetings with emails with project progress status. Dissemination of results was done in different ways, through events, sharing via social media, e-mails etc. 2)Preparation of educational materials involved all the partners in preparation of printed leaflets on 6 topics. All 6 leaflets (brochures) were translated in their local languages, so in total we prepared 30 leaflets (brochures)which are all online and available to be downloaded by other organisations and youth workers. 3)Video tutorials preparations consisted of 2 video shooting sessions, one in Sweden in August 2023 and one in Serbia in April 2024, when partners had a chance to meet up and work together in person on creating video tutorials. Each of the video sessions produced 4 videos, so in total we created 8 videos with around 115 minutes of educational video material.4)Public awareness campaign included promo-materials preparation and production, work on web-page on Relearn’s website and 13 local actions in 4 countries in the period May-September/Oct<< Results >>A small network for environmental education is created of 6 youth organisations from the EU, Western Balkans and Caucasus regions, 4 partner organisations and 2 associating organisations, plus more associates, such as high-schools, NGOs, green businesses we cooperated with during the project implementation. The network worked together on creating educational materials about environmental sustainability and created short 6 leaflets, printed and online pdf versions in 4 partners’ languages and English (30 in total, printed in 12,600 copies) on 6 specific topics: gardening and composting, upcycling and repairing, waste materials crafting, ecovillages, zero waste life with home cooking recipes and green business, and 8 educational video tutorials,in English, published on project YT channel. A public-awareness campaign in partners’ local communities promoting sustainable lifestyle and trans-national cooperation in this field was organised with 13 local actions in 4 countries, in the period May - October 2024 with 5 promo material items produced, such as T-shirts, roll-up banners, bottles, aprons, pens and small cards in the total number of 1,000 copies. Relearn developed a special page on its web site with all project outputs and resul